In my last blog post, I showed that while governments are increasingly using the technology to demonstrate that services are improving, their efforts risk being undermined by “gaming” – in other words, fiddling the performance statistics to make things look better than they really are.

We focused on the problem in the UK. In this blog, I look at what the UK has and hasn’t done to address the problem, and what we can learn from that.

Governments are under pressure to show their ever more educated and informed citizens that schools, hospitals and other public services are getting better. Traditionally, they have done that by spending money and building things: look, a brand new hospital! Of course, everybody knows that there is more to service quality than dollars, bricks and mortar. But at least we can see and touch bricks and mortar. How can we put a finger on service quality?

Development depends on how well resources are spent. So, how can we truly follow the money from the moment that it is delivered all the way through how it is spent? How can we gather the data necessary to make informed decisions about the resources that drive development?

Connecting data from revenue generation through spending is key to tracking resources. If we have open data about development assistance, as well as open data about public contracting, and we can connect that data, we will be better able to have the information necessary to ensure that resources are spent more effectively and efficiently.

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Boys play on a soccer field near the Community Center of Pirajá, in the suburbs of Salvador, Bahia. Photo: Mariana Ceratti / World Bank

Sport is no longer an activity solely associated with exercising the human body and mind. It’s a global industry that captivates billions of people, employs millions, and generates as much revenue, according to a recent study, as one percent of global GDP.

Growing at around seven percent annually between 2009 and 2013 – that’s faster than the GDP of most countries in the world – sport has become a behemoth. And with huge size comes a darker side. Corruption, cheating, bribery. It’s time to clean up sport and promote healthy physical education with a new global initiative.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, modern sport has been self-governed by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as international sport federations (ISFs) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Many of those NGOs have become immersed in corruption scandals.

On International Anti-corruption Day 2014, one of the issues we at the Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative want to illustrate - is how recovering stolen assets helps fight corruption and end impunity.

On International Anti-Corruption Day, those involved in this effort, gather to express a shared commitment to take action, and to pledge - in the words of this year’s Twitter hashtag – to #breakthechain, against all forms of corruption - from petty bribes to grand corruption.

Here at the World Bank, we are hosting the ‘International Corruption Hunters Alliance’. The Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, spoke out strongly, highlighting the malignant effects of corruption as, ‘an abuse of power; the pursuit of money or influence at the expense of society as a whole’.

Accountability Institutions – such as Information Commissions, Ombudsman and Supreme Audit Institutions – play a fundamental role in advancing government openness. Initiatives such as the Open Government Partnership should deepen engagement with them.

Transparency and accountability are key priorities of the Open Government movement. They are also areas where accountability institutions can have real impact. Information Commissions play a crucial role in guaranteeing the right to information. Ombudsman institutions handle citizen complaints about public administration and help protect citizen rights. They have a crucial mediation function that fosters reciprocal engagement of the citizen and state. Supreme Audit Institutions (SAIs) are also a critical part of the national accountability architecture, with a mandate to “watch over” government accounts, operations, and performance, through external auditing.

At times, I ask my friends in Nepal, why they would not launch a business, especially when they have funds. A common obstacle for everyone is that they say you have to bribe government officials to even open a business.

Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) is a global problem which requires global solutions. BEPS refers to tax planning strategies that exploit gaps and mismatches in tax rules to artificially shift profits to low or no-tax locations where there is little or no economic activity, resulting in significant savings in corporate taxes. BEPS is of major significance for developing countries due to their heavy reliance on corporate income tax, particularly from multinational enterprises (MNEs).

On October 10th 2014, nearly 60 top ministry of finance and tax administration officials from all over the world gathered in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, for a workshop on tax base erosion and profit shifting and Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI). The workshop was co-organized by CIAT, GIZ, OECD and the World Bank Group.

Change is what development is all about. The hard part, as the well-chosen title of a new World Bank book makes clear, is persuading the right kind of change to put down roots and flourish.

Institutions Taking Root is a collection of success stories about building state capacity in challenging contexts. The common theme of these stories is not success in itself. They move us firmly on from the old ‘cometh the hour, cometh the leader’ cliché. A good harvest takes more than one seed; years of preparation go into the fertile ground that yields it.

The book looks at the committed group of leaders in Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Finance and Economic Development who continued to perform key functions during civil conflict. It considers the pool of leaders who have filled key positions inside and outside The Gambia’s Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education, and yet have held onto a common and consistent vision of policy and implementation.